Conventionally, discussion request written documents on which various types of projects, in-company rules or the like are written are distributed on a paper base to relevant departments, customers and the like and the contents of the discussion request written documents are discussed when establishing or revising the various projects, in-company rules or the like. Conventionally, however, a discussion request document is distributed on a paper base, it takes considerable labor and cost to copy the document, manage distribution parties, manage the collection and accumulation of discussion results, send reminders when the results are not collected and the like. Accordingly, units and methods capable of effectively solving these disadvantages have been long desired.
As stated above, in a company, every work is performed through the discussion of a written document. To be specific, as shown in FIG. 41, a discussion requester in a discussion request department creates an original on which design and manufacture rules (standards, drawings or documents) to be discussed are described, creates copies of a set of the original by the number of discussion commitment departments as a discussion request document and puts each copy in an envelope.
Next, the discussion requester writes distribution information (department, mail address, discussion participant, organization of company) on each of the plural envelopes, and distributes a set of the discussion request document to each of the discussion commitment departments using an in-company mail system. Here, the distribution information is updated based on an organization list published by an organization management department whenever personnel changes or organization changes occur.
When the discussion request document is distributed to respective discussion participants, the participants discuss the discussion request document. At this moment, if necessary, the discussion participants obtain a material (materials) necessary for a discussion and holds the discussion while referring to the material (materials). Then, the discussion participants send paper-base discussion results as replies (approval, disapproval or change) to the discussion requester using the mail system.
The discussion requester collects the discussion results from the plural discussion participants on a paper base. If all the discussion results cannot be collected even after a predetermined reply deadline, the discussion requester reminds the discussion participants of the replies over the telephone or the like. When all the discussion results are collected, the discussion results are accumulated and the accumulation result is reflected in the original of the design and manufacture rules (standards, drawings or documents).
Meanwhile, as described above, the distribution of a discussion request document and the collection of discussion result replies have been conventionally on a paper base, it disadvantageously requires a considerable amount of paper as a whole and it is disadvantageously difficult to promptly perform a series of document discussion operations including a distribution operation, a collection operation and an accumulation operation.
Further, it has been conventionally necessary to accurately reflect changes of the departments to which distribution parties (discussion participants) belong, organization and the like in distribution party information following personnel changes or organization changes. It can be easily imagined that much labor and cost are required to, for example, manage the distribution information. This disadvantage is particularly conspicuous in a company having frequent personnel changes and organization changes.